Rogers is On Fire! Many New Phones Announced

Rogers is pulling out all the stops with great new devices coming out! In the last week they have announced that the following are either available or coming soon:

Apple iPhone 4 – Well, we all knew this was coming but for those that are fans, nice to see if it here. The iPhone 4 includes an all new sleeker design, very high resolution screen and a much more powerful processor.

Blackberry Torch 9800 – Just announced yesterday, the Torch is a large (huge!) Blackberry device with a slid-down qwerty and touch screen. For many this is going to be a very nice compromise allowing for a larger screen than most Blackberries (Blackberrys?) but still enjoying a nicely sized qwerty keyboard.

Curve 9300 – The Curve line of smartphones lives on with the 9300. There really isn’t a lot to write home about the 9300 other than to say it continues the line of very capable and reliable Blackberries at an affordable price point.

Motorola Flipout – Have you seen this cute little phone!? It is small and square, at least until you swing the screen around, much like the old Sidekick phones. It runs Android and uses Motorola’s Blur interface to stay in touch with friends. Very nice phone for the price for the younger smartphone user.

Galaxy S Captivate – The Juice!! The Samsung Galaxy S line of phones comes to Rogers as the Captivate, the same model as AT&T carries in the US. It’s a beautiful 4″ Super AMOLED display with a VERY thin profile, nice angles and a very fast and powerful processor. It’s a more expensive option, but with the included specs it’s worth it.

Nicely done Rogers! Keep bringing us Canadians lots of choice in phones and we will hug you!

New Canadian Carrier Launches Today – chatr

Back on June 30th, Rogers announced their intent to launch a new brand to focus on the unlimited talk and text segment of the market that has recently taken off.  This new brand will be the third cellular brand for Rogers, after acquiring Fido a number of years back and will be called chatr.

chatr wireless officially launches today – http://www.chatrwireless.com They currently have 4 phones listed on their site, all of which are of the non-smartphone variety. In regards to plans, it looks like chatr is directly aimed at the new carriers that have recently launched across Canada – Wind, Public Mobile, and Mobilicity. For $35 you get unlimited incoming calls, unlimited outgoing calls to anywhere in your province, unlimited incoming text messages, and 50 outgoing texts. Plus you get call display, call waiting, call forwarding, and group calling for free. The only other plan they offer is $45 and that plan raises the limitations of the smaller plan. So unlimited calls to anywhere in the province becomes unlimited to anywhere in Canada and the 50 outgoing text messages becomes unlimited. Currently, chatr doesn’t have any data plans. I’m sure they’ll be adding something in the future.

In much the same way as Wind, chatr has zones of coverage. You can be in the chatr zone and out of the zone. Extra charges apply for when you’re out of coverage, and the coverage maps look very much like those of Wind and Mobilicity.

It’s great to see the competition in Canada finally starting to heat up. Wind was the first to break ground with unlimited and it’s made the big guys take notice. It’s going to be an interesting year for mobile in Canada.

Full press release from Rogers about the launch of chatr is available after the break.

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Rogers Adds the X10 Mini to Their Device Line Up

Rogers has launched their latest addition to the Android family of phones – X10 Mini, and the smaller brother to the flagship X10 smartphone form Sony Ericsson. The claim is that the Mini is the smallest phone on the market today. I haven’t played with one personally, so I can’t say if that’s true or not. The pictures make the phone look thick – so it might smallest in terms of height and width, but I don’t think it’s the case in terms of depth.

The Mini features a quad-band GSM radio – 850/900/1800/1900, and a tri-band HSPA radio – 850/1900/2100. Which means you’ll have strong cellular reception and fast data on this small device. Everything else on the Mini has been reduced to follow with the theme of the phone – a 5.0 megapixel camera instead of the 8.1 found on the original X10. Same for the memory, the Mini sports a whopping 128MB compared to the 1GB found on it’s big brother. Keep in mind that the price follows the same trend – the X10 is $549.99 off contract, and the Mini is $374.99. When you add in a 3 year contract, the phone is just $29.99, which is a pretty reasonable price.

Sadly, much like the original X10, this device is also running the older Android 1.6 operating system. Google has released 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 is starting to make it’s way to devices. Sony Ericsson needs to get an update for these devices out the door quickly and get them on a newer version of Android.

Aside from the thickness of the device, it looks like a great little device. I’m interested in seeing how well Sony Ericson was able to take their customizations from the X10 and scale them down to the Mini. We have received a Mini for review and Darren will be sharing his thoughts on the device.

The full press release is available after the break.

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Rogers Offers First Bada Phone: Samsung Wave

Earlier this year Samsung introduced it’s new operating system, Bada.  Their first phone is called the “Wave” for it really does look quite nice.  It is available from Rogers for $99 on contract.  Full Press Release below:

Samsung Makes a Splash with the Launch of Wave

First smartphone to feature Super AMOLED display and bada, Samsung’s open platform

MISSISSAUGA, ON, July 8 /CNW/ – Samsung Mobile, the leading mobile phone brand in Canada, today announced the availability of the Samsung Wave (model: S8500), the first smartphone to leverage bada, Samsung’s new, open smartphone platform. The Samsung Wave is the first Canadian smartphone to feature Samsung’s Super AMOLED screen technology – providing users with improved outdoor visibility, reduced power consumption and unrivalled picture clarity.

With the launch of the Wave, Samsung is actively constructing a total eco-system around the bada platform including Samsung Apps, an integrated application store. Samsung Apps will increase the premium content and applications pool through collaboration with partner companies and developers.

The availability of the Samsung bada SDK (Software Development Kit) will ensure that consumers can experience a steady stream of new applications that support bada platform.

“The Samsung Wave represents our strategy to deliver rich, exciting smartphone experiences to everyone via one of the highest quality display screens in the industry,” saidPaul Brannen, vice president, Samsung Mobile. “We also anticipate that Samsung bada will significantly expand the smartphone consumer market in Canada, which will create an ocean of opportunity for developers.”

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Apple’s New iPhone 4: Canada Bound

Yesterday, Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs introduced the world to their newest iPhone: the iPhone 4.

The good news for Canadians is that the iPhone 4 is coming sometime soon.  Rogers will be announcing the launch on their network “within weeks”.  We’ll post pricing and availability when we know.  Most likely pricing will mirror the US – except for that little 3-years-instead-of-2-years part – and should be $199 on contract.

I made notes during the launch announcement and am including them below…just in case you didn’t want to read a long article about all the new features:

iOS4 – the name of the new OS rather than iPhone OS.  It makes sense given that it’s on the iPad as well.
iBooks – iPad and iPhone – download to both, saves your place on either and no extra cost for book.  Added PDF support.
Lots of HTML5 mentions.
$5billion in App store sales, $1billion to developers – Apple emphasize the later but my thought was “Holy Shnikies!  Apple made $4 billion just from Apps!!!”
iPhone – New design, super slim 9.3mm, glass on front and back, metal band around outside is also antennas
Front-facing camera for video conferencing called FaceTime, but only over WiFi
Rear facing cam is 5megapixel, but loaded with geeky tech goodness for great shots
SUPER high res screen, 960×640, 4x times current, called Retina display, 326 pixels per inch, 70% of iPad res – All that to say, “WOW!”  That is going to be a gorgeous screen!
Apple’s own A4 processor, the same as is in the iPad.  Should be blistering fast.
Larger battery for 40% longer life – 3g talk – 7hrs, browsing 3g – 6hrs, wifi browsing – 10hrs
Three axis Gyroscope – for better 3d gaming
HD Video capture – 720p, 30fps video
Built-in video editing (with optional iMovie) – Looks like it will be a very capable video editor, indeed!
Unified inbox with multiple exchange accounts support
Bing search added
iAds – because Apple isn’t making enough money yet.
By September will roll out to 88 countries – very fast rollout
June 21st, free upgrade too all iPhone, iPad and iPod users but won’t have all features on 3G iPhone and 2G touch

Sounds pretty darn impressive.  Are you getting one?

Rogers Announces Two New Smartphones

Rogers has two new smartphones for Canadians; the Blackberry Pearl 9100 and the Acer Liquid E.

The Blackberry Pearl 9100, like other Pearl phones has a compact qwerty keyboard and really looks fantastic!  While most Pearls seem to have been aimed at consumers the 9100 looks all business-like in it’s black suit.

The 9100 specs include a 2.2 inch, 360 x 400 TFT display, a trackpad and a 3 megapixel camera.  The OS seems to be very similar to the BB Bold, but I really don’t know much about Blackberry.

The other new phone is Acer Liquid E, a slate style phone running Android 2.1.  The E also includes a QualComm Snapdragon processor, 3.5” touch screen, and 5 megapixel camera.  We are hoping to get a review unit soon and will let you know more about this phone.

Both phones are $49.99 with a three year agreement and a minimum $45 per month plan, which is pretty decent pricing for new entrants in Canada.

Acer Liquid E Pricing Sounds Good!

Rogers is bringing the Acer Liquid E to Canada sometime soon and MobileSyrup is reporting it will be at a low off-contract price of just $379.99. That is a pretty good price for a phone with these specs:

Adroid 2.1
768MHz Snapdragon processor, 256 MB of RAM and 512MB of ROM
WVGA 3.5inch TFT capacitive display
5 megapixel camera
3.5 mm headset jack

We’ll have to see how well all these specs come together and are looking forward to reviewing the Liquid E sometime soon.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Launching on Rogers

Mike and I got the chance to attend the launch event for the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Android device for Rogers. It was dark, noisy…it was a launch party.

I have to say, the X10 looks quite nice and fits in the hand so well. The 4 inch WVGA screen is nice and crisp and is a snappy performer. It comes with 1 gig of RAM and I believe a 16 gig microSD card. Its biggest differentiator has to be its skin over Android. Take a look at the video for a bit of the Timescape UI.

The only problem we saw with the X10 was that Sony Ericsson’s Timescape interface was fairly laggy. With a 1GHz processor this seems crazy, but as you will see in the video there are a few hiccups. The X10 is expected to get an update to Android 2.1 later this year (from the current 1.6), so perhaps SE will smooth out it’s rough edges.

The X10 will sell for $149 on a three year contract. This is actually a pretty good deal for a nice phone.

Update on Wireless in Canada

It’s no secret that Canadians have been at the mercy of the “big three” cellphone carriers in Canada with little to no competition for far too long. 

So, how are we doing now that we have at least one new choice?

The honest truth about consumer choice in Canadian cellular is that for a long time we have had none.  Sure, there has been three carriers but if they haven’t been secretly meeting in dark alleys to discuss rates they at least have not been competitive.  The result is that pricing for voice and data has been extremely high in Canada until recently.  So, what changed?  New blood!

The latest carrier to enter the scene in Canada is WIND Mobile and they bring with them a refreshing focus on consumers.  While their plans are not earth shattering they at least represent a decent option for some.  I’ll get back to WIND in just a bit.

Our big three – or rather, ‘big two’ since Bell and TELUS are conjoined twins – milked consumers to the point of breaking but with no choice, what could we do?  The government dragged their feet for a long time but FINALLY offered cellular spectrum in an auction open to everyone but Rogers and Bellus.  These companies finally saw that some form of competition was coming and I think that is when they decided to become more competitive; well, at least Bellus did.  Roger’s plans have changed very little, probably because they are still on a high from being the exclusive carrier of the iPhone.  But of course, that is no longer true either, so hopefully we will see changes from Rogers.

I personally use Bell and am happy with the rates they have for data.  I still pay far too much overall for my cellphone but they have improved.  Of course, they still are not connecting with their customers in any measurable way.  While Rogers has made strides on Social Networking sites like twitter there is nothing from Bell that I have seen and little from Telus.  I’m pretty sure Bell executives are still scratching their blue hair over that new fangled site “MySpace”. [to any Bell executive reading this I apologize.  You hair is actually a very nice shade of blue, I meant the guy in the office two down from you.]

WIND Mobile does represent the kind of company we have been waiting for in Canada but how are they doing so far?  Apparently they signed up 10,000 subscribers in their first month.  Uhhhh…

Ok, maybe some would think that is good considering they are new, they have limited coverage, they spend all day playing with Microsoft Surface, but the point is they need to do MUCH better.  They are currently looking to raise money to roll out in other cities, but return on that money would have to be extremely speculative at this point.  Lets hope they are able to get on Dragon’s Den and win over at least a couple Dragons.

Things are looking a bit better for Canadians but we have a long way to go.  Let’s try to support new carriers as much as possible, or at least the carriers that are trying to change for the better.

Rogers Gets its Hand Slapped

In a mirror image of what is happening in the US, Rogers has been told to stop making claims of being the “most reliable’ network in Canada. Rogers has been making this claim for a long time now but Telus has finally taken them to task on these claims.

What I’m really surprised at is Telus’ slightly between-the-lines assertion that this has actually been true until November 6th when they rolled out their HSPA network. If you think about that, this claim isn’t actually saying that Rogers’ network is inferior now but that there is simply no basis, or no third-party data to assert this claim. In other words, it’s actually possible that Rogers’ network is the more reliable but they need the backing of a third party in making this claim.

The flip side of this could very well be that Telus and Bell may actually have the more reliable network but they too would have to have confirmation to make that claim. At this point they don’t seem to be making trying to lay claim to these bragging rights, they simply want Rogers to stop their advertising campaign.

I’m personally a Bell user and find their network to be as close to rock solid as wireless can be. Their HSPA network actually gave me better signal strength than their own CDMA network.

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